The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has revealed the discovery of an illegal oil pipeline that is routed into the sea and used in stealing crude oil.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports that the Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari made the disclosure at a meeting with Senate ad hoc committee on oil theft in Nigeria on Tuesday.
Kyari said the discovery was made with the help of its private security partners, further disclosing that the illegal oil pipeline had probably operated for the last nine years.
According to him, the illegal oil pipeline is about four kilometres long, stressing that the route did not get to its terminal.
Speaking during the meeting, Kyari also disclosed that the company has deactivated 395 illegal refineries in its efforts to curb oil theft in the country.
The NNPC GCEO, who raised an alarm over the scale of oil theft, and vandalism of assets in recent times described the crime as calamitous.
“We have deactivated 395 illegal refineries, we have taken down 273 wooden boats, we have destroyed 374 illegal reservoirs, we destroyed 1,561 metal tanks.
“We have sized over 49 trucks and burnt them down, we have discovered illegal oil pits of 898 so far, and 1,219 cooking sites have been taken down,” he said.
He said crude theft by vandals has brought down Nigeria’s oil production to around 1.2 million barrels per day from 1.8 million.
He said that It was not true that the difference between 1.2 million barrels and its potential budget level of 1.8 million barrels was been stolen.
“To be very precise, we have never seen this level of escalations in our operations. The scale of oil theft, and vandals that we are seeing today is unprecedented, prices of crude oil is so high in the market today, for oil thieves to operate.
”But we have put a structure of security hovering around our partners, all the government security agencies, we have set up security private contractors.
“Because the Brass, Forcados and the Bonny terminals, all of them are practically doing zero production today, the combined effect is that you have lost 600,000 barrels per day, when you do a reality test.
“But we hope to restore production to the Forcados terminal, this is as a result of the security intervention that is ongoing,” he said.
The Chairman of the joint committee, Sen. Mohammed Nakudu (APC-Jigawa) urged the NNPC Group general manager to install trackers on trucks lifting crude from terminals, saying that there was technology to monitor ships laden with crude as done in other countries.
He also urged him to be prepared for oversight in Port Harcourt and Warri Refineries, given the submission of NNPC that the refineries have been rehabilitated.